a collaborative piece with Victoria Martniez

Ariella Schreck and Victoria Martinez crossed artistic paths in the desolate city of Baltimore. During their studies at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, Martinez majored in fine arts studio and Schreck focuses on photography. While traveling through New England in 2010, Schreck stopped in Baltimore and stayed with Martinez where they discovered a shared passion in textiles and collage. Because of their shared enthusiasm to create, Martinez suggested they work on a fabric installation, made to stretch across a 14-foot span of fencing. Over the course of one day, fabric was appropriated, cut, collaged and sewn to create a colorful flag and symbol of a once empty space. Having both enjoyed the spontaneous, large-scale collaborative way of working; they decided to further their collaboration.

Intercepted boundaries was created in two segments; first the base layer was crafted in Baltimore, then the piece was sent to Schreck to build on to the abstraction. Martinez, responding to the way color, patters and emotions organically form, created a collage by sewing together fragments of fabric that relate to her cultural identity. With the collaged form made, Schreck then printed older travel photographs and appliquéd them to the piece. The form made strongly resembles a continent, with stitched lines implicating borders and boundaries. 

 Chance plays a major role in both the artists work, as their imagery comes from the re-appropriation of old imagery or found scraps that others may view as disposable. Martinez and Schreck’s love of discovering opportunities in these articles creates a new life in each collage composed.